Making marketing environmentally sustainable: A model

This is the third post in a series on improving the environmental sustainability of marketing communications. Previously: Measurement, Part 1 and Part 2. Today: An outline of a model for making it happen.

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After establishing through measurement the environmental footprint of your marketing communications, it’s time to start the reduction process. The 5-step model outlined here may seem simple and partly familiar, but it requires creative thinking and constant innovation adapted to the needs of your company and your community.

The five-step model for reducing the environmental impact of your marketing communications borrows from the familiar waste hierarchy of reduce – reuse – recycle. It adds two elements on the front and back ends, however, which add conceptual and restorative elements to the process, thus completing it into a neat cycle.

After you measure your marcom’s footprint and before you proceed to reduce it, you must rethink marketing as a whole (think eyeballs vs. hearts-and-minds marketing). And, after you’ve done everything you could, whatever resources you do consume in your marketing program must be replenished, either through using waste as food or through balancing your consumption with other methods, like offsets.

Future posts in this series will tackle each step at length. For now, here’s a simple diagram encapsulating the model*:

A few notes on the model:

• Though covered separately in past two posts, measurement is a part of each phase. Rethinking marketing from the environmental standpoint requires the still-unusual step of measuring the environmental impact of marketing communications. Reducing the consumption of marketing communication tools requires the comparison of before and after impact. And so on.

• As with the original reduce – reuse – recycle hierarchy, the five steps of the model are ordered not only chronologically but also by preference and importance. After Rethink, each subsequent phase should only follow if no more can be done in the previous step.

• Following the model requires going through all the steps. Skipping a step or more will hamper the effectiveness of the process.

• While the model proceeds through the five phases in the order of preference, as the diagram indicates it’s not a strictly linear process. After reaching the Replenish phase, the savvy sustainable marketer will use the new information and insights gained through the process to again re-evaluate the overall marketing program. The constant innovation process helps identify opportunities for improvement.

• The reduction of the environmental footprint of your marketing communications doesn’t imply the financial bottom line should suffer. Improvements in environmental performance should preserve or even improve, your marketing and overall business performance. However, in the Rethink phase you’ll be re-evaluating what that means, to balance all three bottom lines — Prosperity (Profit), People, Planet — in a mix that works for your business and for your community.

Up next

Next week, I’ll start tackling the first step of the model, Rethink. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, please let me know in Comments your thoughts on the model. Did I miss anything? Will it work? Are you already using it in some other form?

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Image credit: suttonhoo

* Diagram created on Gliffy.com.

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